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tuftearsThis was it, our last night aboard the Le Ponant. As noted in my last entry, we'd actually arrived in Naples last night so the ship wasn't rocking as much as it would have at sea, but I took half a sleeping pill to be on the safe side and get some sleep. We got up bright and early so that we could pack up our luggage-- they needed to be ready at the door at 7:30 AM.
On the downside, one of my suitcase's tiny TSA-approved locks had gone missing. My brother had advised me to take along an extra one or two-- I should have listened! Ah well. I used a bit of wire to secure the now-unlocked compartment.
Here's me, dressed up for leaving the ship. On most previous days I had worn a light black jacket, but it was getting way too warm for that; I wore my Hawaiian shirt over a T-shirt for today's excursion. So long, Le Ponant! We'll miss you.
Here's Dracosphynx, on one of the rare occasions where he sat down for a proper breakfast! (most of the trip he had simply contented himself with a cup of tea and one of the breakfast pastries)
Our luggage was collected and stacked with the rest of the tour's luggage on the dock; they would be taken care of for us so we wouldn't need to worry about extracting them from the bus onto the hotel or anything like that, and delivered to our rooms. That's full Tauck service.
We boarded the tour bus and were whisked off to our morning tour-- the Herculaneum! If you've heard of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius basically incinerating the city of Pompeii, well, what happened here was that (per the paper they gave us) at around 1 PM on August 24 (79 AD), Vesuvius began spewing ash and volcanic stone thousands of meters into the sky. When it reached the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere, the top of the cloud flattened. The prevailing winds at the time blew toward the southeast, causing the volcanic material to fall primarily on the city of Pompeii and the surrounding area. Since Herculaneum lay to the west of Vesuvius, it was only mildly affected by the first phase of the eruption. While roofs in Pompeii collapsed under the weight of falling debris, minimal ash fell on Herculaneum, causing little damage but nonetheless prompting many inhabitants to flee.
During the night, the column of volcanic debris which had risen into the stratosphere began falling back down onto Vesuvius. A pyroclastic flow formed which sent a mixture of 750F gas, ash and rock racing down at 100 mph toward Herculaneum. At about 1AM it reached the boat houses, where those waiting for rescue were killed instantly by the intense heat. This flow and several more following it slowly filled the city's buildings from the bottom up, causing them little damage.
So essentially, the buildings of the Herculaneum were preserved nearly intact beneath an airtight seal formed by the dense "tuff" (rock formed from the consolidation of volcanic ash) over 1700 years.
This bas relief and the accompanying plaque were at the front of the... what do you call the modern-era building which provides a starting point for tours of ancient ruins? If it were a room, one might say 'antechamber', but as it is a building, let's say 'ante-building'.
Sadly even enlarged the text was indecipherable, so I can only guess this was art circa the 1st century AD.
This is another of the modern buildings that prefaced the Herculaneum. I had assumed the signpost identified it, but 'Scavi di Ercolano' seems to refer to the Herculaneum site as a whole, not to this particular thing. Maybe it's where the 'boat exhibit' is held?
Either way, it's pretty interesting looking, wouldn't you say? ^_^
Our tour group making its way into the site! Access was gated, so that there wouldn't be too many tourists at any one point in the site at a time.
We came around the seaward side of the site. Common to these is that you can see both the modern buildings of Ercolano, and the uncovered buildings of the Herculaneum.
Those apparent cliffs on the left side? That's how deep the town of Herculaneum was buried by volcanic tuff! The sward of green grass on the left is what used to be sea; it was an ocean town.
The port of Herculaneum; you can see what would have been a pier back in the days.
A map!
We descended down toward the level of the site via several stairs, and then crossed this ancient bridge into Herculaneum proper.
Dracosphynx snapped this picture of me on the way in.
One of the numerous courtyards. I suspect that the columns would have reached some uniform height and perhaps been topped with statues, but were snapped off.
An oddly constructed sort of wall. I suspect it was rebuilt several times.
Per Dracosphynx: "in earlier times, people dug down into the place for treasures and artifacts. Instead of excavating the entire city, they just dug tunnels down and...
tunneled through walls or whatever else was in the way. ... the walls had been patched to fill in where the looting tunnels had been."
If I remember right, this used to be a bar. Those holes in the counter would have been used to store liquor, keeping them relatively cool.
Dracosphynx tells me this used to be a public toilet-- there would have been a wooden bench above the carved channel for sitting down and, ah, "taking care of business."
We entered a bath-house here. Soap wasn't common so the idea was that they would build up sweat by entering progressively hotter chambers, and then scrape off the filth from their skin into the water, then cool off.
A mosaic of the sea-god, Neptune?
More interiors of the bath-house.
The sign reads more or less: LA BASILICA NONIANA - Only the eastern external wall of this building can be seen along the Cardo III, which has been identified as the civil court which, as recorded in an inscription, Marcus Nonius Balbus paid for in the Augustan period, and which is referred to as the Basilica Noniana in a wax tablet of AD61. ...
The sign reads more or less: The College of the Augustales - The Augustales were members of an order made up of freedmen that was dedicated to the imperial cult and their college was built in Herculaneum while Augustus was still alive. It stands at the corner between the Decumanus Maximus and the upper Cardo III and had two entrances that opened up onto these two streets. ...
Ancient architecture, miraculously preserved!
What makes this interesting is when you realize... they had paint in those days! It's not like everything was actually boringly sand-colored, it's that the passage of time has eroded paint from most things. It was preserved here in the Herculaneum and then restored, thanks to the air-tight seal the volcanic tuff provided.
Ancient architecture might have been far more colorful than I'd envisioned!
A Herculaneum street. It's all very well to look at and inside the buildings but one has to see how they come together to form a neighborhood as well.
I gather this was some sort of ancient painting or poster, preserved behind glass. Dracosphynx says, "The fun bit is if you look at some of the writing, you realize the letters are getting smaller and smaller - this was a sign for a wine store, I think. See all the bottles on the poster? So the guy started writing his sales pitch above the bottles, but started too big and ran out of space, so suddenly the letter get really small."
A rare picture of the elusive Dracosphynx within an entrance to one of the houses!
The streets were pretty deep, like this one here. Dracosphynx notes that the Herculaneum *did* have underground sewers; Pompei did not. In Pompei the streets *were* the sewers and they had stepping stones in the streets so you could cross without... well, stepping *into* the street
Above, the city of Ercolano.
Dracosphynx says this wasn't a tavern but the inside of a rather expensive house. "... with the mosaic in the middle,
to either side you can see the remains of paintings. Those were paintings of
plants and shrubberies. The wealthy had indoor garden areas. So during the
day, the doors would be open, and you look down, through the entrance way, the
halls, etc. and see the garden. The not so wealthy opened their doors, and
you could look in, down the entrances, and see... a painting of a garden,
which might be good enough to fool people on first glance."
I suspect this may have been an ancient fountain or display of some sort.
I didn't think of it at the time, but probably the frame up there is a modern skylight built over the ancient skylight, to protect the inside from acidic rain. According to Dracosphynx, under ordinary circumstances, those projections on the side would have served as water spouts to let the water drain into the fountain basin below.
A look into one of the various homes. They were built along similar floorplans, with a garden at the inside of each villa across from the entrance. The space here wouldn't permit the owner to build a garden as well, so he substituted by having a mural of a garden painted on the facing wall.
As we departed the ruins of Herculaneum (I picked up my only souvenir of the trip, a shopping bag depicting a cat atop a Roman pillar) we encountered this domestic scene of a cat receiving scritches from a tourist.
We were relieved to be back in the bus and out of the heat. Some traveling later, we reached a restaurant pretty much out on the side of the road, the "Restaurant del Sole" in Capua, where we would have lunch.
This is quite possibly the meatiest cheese I have ever had. It's a buffalo mozzarella, served with vinegar-drizzled tomatoes and a nice crusty bread.
Pretty forgettable marinara-based pasta. We were given a choice of 'red' and 'white' pasta. I assume the white pasta basically used an alfredo sauce.
A tasty lemon-filled slice of cake!
Thus fortified, we returned to the bus and continued... another two hours before we hit a roadstop. Hey, the tourists were even older than I was, frequent bathroom breaks were essential for our sanity, not to mention refreshment and getting some nice cool air, given the bus's malfunctioning air conditioning.
It was a pretty big truck-stop sort of place. This picture really doesn't do justice to the size.
They sold all sorts of things-- not just food and coffee (and they had their own espresso bar, as one would expect in Italy) but also toys, pharmaceuticals, basically anything you might need on a long family road trip.
At last we arrived in Rome, at the Hotel Majestic, where we would be staying! The sign (clipped) reads: The prestigious Roman hotel was built in 1889 by an architect from Alto Adige, but Roman of choice, Gaetano Koch (1849-1910), on one of the most exclusive streets in the Capital via Veneto, that is, the most important street of the quarter constituted at the end of the 19th century on the ruins of Villa Ludovisi. The privilege of exclusive zone has countersigned this area since antiquity; it was in fact destined to the rich middle class and to the most popular exponents of the Roman magistracy. ...
The very old-time elevator!
This is the antique room key they gave us. We actually weren't supposed to take this off the premises; instead we needed to hand this in at the front desk, and we could claim it on our return.
I'd taken a picture of the somewhat odd room doors-- each of the doors had a doorknob square in the center, rather than to one side-- but it turned out too blurry to share, unfortunately.
Here is Dracosphynx on the other side of the hotel room. They were pretty small beds, pressed up against each other.
There was no dinner; we were encouraged to nom some of the snacks they had given us earlier in the day instead. We weren't terribly hungry, which is just as well.
Scenes from Rome! These were taken while the bus was pushing through the city to the Vatican, where we would be attending our "Tauck exclusive" after-hours tour.
"MUSEI VATICANI"
There were several armed guards on duty, with very modern and nasty-looking rifles, but I refrained from taking pictures of them.
This might appear as if it were taken from outside, but this is a window on the inside of the Musei Vaticani, looking across the courtyard. So darn pretty!
Here we are on our way up. There's no air conditioning; it got pretty darn hot. I would hate to have to visit during the daytime with the hoi polloi.
Art almost literally covers every square inch of the museum. It reminded me of the St. John's Co-Cathedral, except far more tasteful. And extensive.
The first major room we entered was this one. Naturally I had to take some extra pictures of the sphynxes.
I assume she's a Roman goddess of some sort.
No... I have no explanation for this chest. Well, I suppose it could be a burial coffin of some sort, but it doesn't seem quite the right shape. I think the canid footrests are pretty adorable though.
Cat!
And a frieze of griffins!
A closer look at the arch as we press on.
The museum was divided into a number of rooms, each themed around a particular subject or type of art. From here, things proceeded a little more quickly, so I focused my photographs on just particular things that struck my interest, rather than trying to get everything (which would have been a doomed attempt).
That's an unusually decorated domed ceiling.
More elaborately framed ceiling paintings!
From the sign next to it: The "Ephesus" Artemis - Found at Hadrian's Vlila, in the so-called Greek Theatre and restored by Giovanni Volpato who sold the statue to the Museums in 1781. The sculpture reproduces the iconography of Artemis worshipped in the famous sanctuary at Ephesus, Asia Minor, in her incarnation as "Lady of the Animals", protector of fertility and abundance. The work is original in its combination of Greek and Oriental elements, with the close rows of overlapping breasts, interpreted by some to be bulls' testicles. There were numerous Roman copies made of this cultic statue, probably created during the second half of the 4th century BC.
The hall of tapestries!
It might appear to be a boring tapestry with old white guys and maybe a couple of pretty young girls, but check out that gynosphynx at the lower right! Yay catgrrl!
Here, that's Jesus, I assume from the halo, but I don't recall a cat and a dog figuring into his story. Or it could be some other scene entirely.
Here, we have the hall of ancient maps!
I snapped some random pictures of maps as vantage permitted.
Oh hey, lions! According to the sign next to it, this is "Justice, Faith (Religion), Charity" - ornamental cover of the throne of (Pope) Clement VII.
We got past those halls and into some rooms preliminary to the Sistine Chapel.
Good grief, this is a LOT of art.
Wow... That is a *super*-intricate floor tile design.
The sign reads, at least the first part: The /Room of the Segnatura/ contains Raphael's most famous works, that represent his debut in the Vatican and mark the beginning of the High Renaissance. The frescoes symbolize a summary of the knowledge of his time. The room takes its name from the highest court of the Holy See, the /Segnatura Gratae et lustitiae/, where the Pope used to officiate assemblies during the mid 16th century. Originally Pope Julius (1503-1513) used the room as his private studio and library: the iconographic scheme of the frescoes, painted between 1508 and 1511, reflects this use. The chiaroscuro works on the lower part were completely remade by Perin del Vaga, a scholar of Raphael, during the papacy of Paul III (1534-1549).
The ceiling is divided in four parts dedicated to different branches of knowledge, represented by allegorical female figures: the Poetry ..., the Philosophy, the Justice, and the Theology.
The aforementioned ceiling.
Welcome to the Sistine Chapel! You can see that famous painting of Adam and God at the center.
We spent quite a bit of time here. Dracosphynx tells me about, and I extract from Wikipedia later, the story that (quote) The Pope's Master of Ceremonies Biagio da Cesena said "it was most disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully, and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather for the public baths and taverns,"[27] In response Michelangelo worked da Cesena's semblance into the scene as Minos, judge of the underworld. It is said that when he complained to the Pope, the pontiff responded that his jurisdiction did not extend to hell, so the portrait would have to remain. (unquote)
A door on the way out of the Sistine Chapel.
We passed through what seemed like a hall filled with precious (in terms of 'precious metals') devotional objects; these as an example.
Note the leopard in the lower right corner of the ... book cover?
I believe this was a model of the Vatican.
Sphynxes! The wing shapes remind me of the Ark of the Covenant from the movie.
Yeah, I have to admit I have no idea who this lion-headed guy is. Sorry!
Here we are on our way out of the Vatican! The staircase starts off quite shallowly, then ramps into a serious downward turn that would leave people in wheelchairs quite discomfitted.
Back to the hotel! With no French-trained chef-made applesauce to hand, Dracosphynx gives me his apple, left over from the snack bag, with instructions to take and chew up a bite of apple, then add the sleeping pill to it and gulp it down as an improvised applesauce.
...
It works. But doesn't taste as good as the Le Ponant's applesauce. I miss their food. -_-
On the downside, one of my suitcase's tiny TSA-approved locks had gone missing. My brother had advised me to take along an extra one or two-- I should have listened! Ah well. I used a bit of wire to secure the now-unlocked compartment.
Here's me, dressed up for leaving the ship. On most previous days I had worn a light black jacket, but it was getting way too warm for that; I wore my Hawaiian shirt over a T-shirt for today's excursion. So long, Le Ponant! We'll miss you.
Here's Dracosphynx, on one of the rare occasions where he sat down for a proper breakfast! (most of the trip he had simply contented himself with a cup of tea and one of the breakfast pastries)
Our luggage was collected and stacked with the rest of the tour's luggage on the dock; they would be taken care of for us so we wouldn't need to worry about extracting them from the bus onto the hotel or anything like that, and delivered to our rooms. That's full Tauck service.
We boarded the tour bus and were whisked off to our morning tour-- the Herculaneum! If you've heard of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius basically incinerating the city of Pompeii, well, what happened here was that (per the paper they gave us) at around 1 PM on August 24 (79 AD), Vesuvius began spewing ash and volcanic stone thousands of meters into the sky. When it reached the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere, the top of the cloud flattened. The prevailing winds at the time blew toward the southeast, causing the volcanic material to fall primarily on the city of Pompeii and the surrounding area. Since Herculaneum lay to the west of Vesuvius, it was only mildly affected by the first phase of the eruption. While roofs in Pompeii collapsed under the weight of falling debris, minimal ash fell on Herculaneum, causing little damage but nonetheless prompting many inhabitants to flee.
During the night, the column of volcanic debris which had risen into the stratosphere began falling back down onto Vesuvius. A pyroclastic flow formed which sent a mixture of 750F gas, ash and rock racing down at 100 mph toward Herculaneum. At about 1AM it reached the boat houses, where those waiting for rescue were killed instantly by the intense heat. This flow and several more following it slowly filled the city's buildings from the bottom up, causing them little damage.
So essentially, the buildings of the Herculaneum were preserved nearly intact beneath an airtight seal formed by the dense "tuff" (rock formed from the consolidation of volcanic ash) over 1700 years.
This bas relief and the accompanying plaque were at the front of the... what do you call the modern-era building which provides a starting point for tours of ancient ruins? If it were a room, one might say 'antechamber', but as it is a building, let's say 'ante-building'.
Sadly even enlarged the text was indecipherable, so I can only guess this was art circa the 1st century AD.
This is another of the modern buildings that prefaced the Herculaneum. I had assumed the signpost identified it, but 'Scavi di Ercolano' seems to refer to the Herculaneum site as a whole, not to this particular thing. Maybe it's where the 'boat exhibit' is held?
Either way, it's pretty interesting looking, wouldn't you say? ^_^
Our tour group making its way into the site! Access was gated, so that there wouldn't be too many tourists at any one point in the site at a time.
We came around the seaward side of the site. Common to these is that you can see both the modern buildings of Ercolano, and the uncovered buildings of the Herculaneum.
Those apparent cliffs on the left side? That's how deep the town of Herculaneum was buried by volcanic tuff! The sward of green grass on the left is what used to be sea; it was an ocean town.
The port of Herculaneum; you can see what would have been a pier back in the days.
A map!
We descended down toward the level of the site via several stairs, and then crossed this ancient bridge into Herculaneum proper.
Dracosphynx snapped this picture of me on the way in.
One of the numerous courtyards. I suspect that the columns would have reached some uniform height and perhaps been topped with statues, but were snapped off.
An oddly constructed sort of wall. I suspect it was rebuilt several times.
Per Dracosphynx: "in earlier times, people dug down into the place for treasures and artifacts. Instead of excavating the entire city, they just dug tunnels down and...
tunneled through walls or whatever else was in the way. ... the walls had been patched to fill in where the looting tunnels had been."
If I remember right, this used to be a bar. Those holes in the counter would have been used to store liquor, keeping them relatively cool.
Dracosphynx tells me this used to be a public toilet-- there would have been a wooden bench above the carved channel for sitting down and, ah, "taking care of business."
We entered a bath-house here. Soap wasn't common so the idea was that they would build up sweat by entering progressively hotter chambers, and then scrape off the filth from their skin into the water, then cool off.
A mosaic of the sea-god, Neptune?
More interiors of the bath-house.
The sign reads more or less: LA BASILICA NONIANA - Only the eastern external wall of this building can be seen along the Cardo III, which has been identified as the civil court which, as recorded in an inscription, Marcus Nonius Balbus paid for in the Augustan period, and which is referred to as the Basilica Noniana in a wax tablet of AD61. ...
The sign reads more or less: The College of the Augustales - The Augustales were members of an order made up of freedmen that was dedicated to the imperial cult and their college was built in Herculaneum while Augustus was still alive. It stands at the corner between the Decumanus Maximus and the upper Cardo III and had two entrances that opened up onto these two streets. ...
Ancient architecture, miraculously preserved!
What makes this interesting is when you realize... they had paint in those days! It's not like everything was actually boringly sand-colored, it's that the passage of time has eroded paint from most things. It was preserved here in the Herculaneum and then restored, thanks to the air-tight seal the volcanic tuff provided.
Ancient architecture might have been far more colorful than I'd envisioned!
A Herculaneum street. It's all very well to look at and inside the buildings but one has to see how they come together to form a neighborhood as well.
I gather this was some sort of ancient painting or poster, preserved behind glass. Dracosphynx says, "The fun bit is if you look at some of the writing, you realize the letters are getting smaller and smaller - this was a sign for a wine store, I think. See all the bottles on the poster? So the guy started writing his sales pitch above the bottles, but started too big and ran out of space, so suddenly the letter get really small."
A rare picture of the elusive Dracosphynx within an entrance to one of the houses!
The streets were pretty deep, like this one here. Dracosphynx notes that the Herculaneum *did* have underground sewers; Pompei did not. In Pompei the streets *were* the sewers and they had stepping stones in the streets so you could cross without... well, stepping *into* the street
Above, the city of Ercolano.
Dracosphynx says this wasn't a tavern but the inside of a rather expensive house. "... with the mosaic in the middle,
to either side you can see the remains of paintings. Those were paintings of
plants and shrubberies. The wealthy had indoor garden areas. So during the
day, the doors would be open, and you look down, through the entrance way, the
halls, etc. and see the garden. The not so wealthy opened their doors, and
you could look in, down the entrances, and see... a painting of a garden,
which might be good enough to fool people on first glance."
I suspect this may have been an ancient fountain or display of some sort.
I didn't think of it at the time, but probably the frame up there is a modern skylight built over the ancient skylight, to protect the inside from acidic rain. According to Dracosphynx, under ordinary circumstances, those projections on the side would have served as water spouts to let the water drain into the fountain basin below.
A look into one of the various homes. They were built along similar floorplans, with a garden at the inside of each villa across from the entrance. The space here wouldn't permit the owner to build a garden as well, so he substituted by having a mural of a garden painted on the facing wall.
As we departed the ruins of Herculaneum (I picked up my only souvenir of the trip, a shopping bag depicting a cat atop a Roman pillar) we encountered this domestic scene of a cat receiving scritches from a tourist.
We were relieved to be back in the bus and out of the heat. Some traveling later, we reached a restaurant pretty much out on the side of the road, the "Restaurant del Sole" in Capua, where we would have lunch.
This is quite possibly the meatiest cheese I have ever had. It's a buffalo mozzarella, served with vinegar-drizzled tomatoes and a nice crusty bread.
Pretty forgettable marinara-based pasta. We were given a choice of 'red' and 'white' pasta. I assume the white pasta basically used an alfredo sauce.
A tasty lemon-filled slice of cake!
Thus fortified, we returned to the bus and continued... another two hours before we hit a roadstop. Hey, the tourists were even older than I was, frequent bathroom breaks were essential for our sanity, not to mention refreshment and getting some nice cool air, given the bus's malfunctioning air conditioning.
It was a pretty big truck-stop sort of place. This picture really doesn't do justice to the size.
They sold all sorts of things-- not just food and coffee (and they had their own espresso bar, as one would expect in Italy) but also toys, pharmaceuticals, basically anything you might need on a long family road trip.
At last we arrived in Rome, at the Hotel Majestic, where we would be staying! The sign (clipped) reads: The prestigious Roman hotel was built in 1889 by an architect from Alto Adige, but Roman of choice, Gaetano Koch (1849-1910), on one of the most exclusive streets in the Capital via Veneto, that is, the most important street of the quarter constituted at the end of the 19th century on the ruins of Villa Ludovisi. The privilege of exclusive zone has countersigned this area since antiquity; it was in fact destined to the rich middle class and to the most popular exponents of the Roman magistracy. ...
The very old-time elevator!
This is the antique room key they gave us. We actually weren't supposed to take this off the premises; instead we needed to hand this in at the front desk, and we could claim it on our return.
I'd taken a picture of the somewhat odd room doors-- each of the doors had a doorknob square in the center, rather than to one side-- but it turned out too blurry to share, unfortunately.
Here is Dracosphynx on the other side of the hotel room. They were pretty small beds, pressed up against each other.
There was no dinner; we were encouraged to nom some of the snacks they had given us earlier in the day instead. We weren't terribly hungry, which is just as well.
Scenes from Rome! These were taken while the bus was pushing through the city to the Vatican, where we would be attending our "Tauck exclusive" after-hours tour.
"MUSEI VATICANI"
There were several armed guards on duty, with very modern and nasty-looking rifles, but I refrained from taking pictures of them.
This might appear as if it were taken from outside, but this is a window on the inside of the Musei Vaticani, looking across the courtyard. So darn pretty!
Here we are on our way up. There's no air conditioning; it got pretty darn hot. I would hate to have to visit during the daytime with the hoi polloi.
Art almost literally covers every square inch of the museum. It reminded me of the St. John's Co-Cathedral, except far more tasteful. And extensive.
The first major room we entered was this one. Naturally I had to take some extra pictures of the sphynxes.
I assume she's a Roman goddess of some sort.
No... I have no explanation for this chest. Well, I suppose it could be a burial coffin of some sort, but it doesn't seem quite the right shape. I think the canid footrests are pretty adorable though.
Cat!
And a frieze of griffins!
A closer look at the arch as we press on.
The museum was divided into a number of rooms, each themed around a particular subject or type of art. From here, things proceeded a little more quickly, so I focused my photographs on just particular things that struck my interest, rather than trying to get everything (which would have been a doomed attempt).
That's an unusually decorated domed ceiling.
More elaborately framed ceiling paintings!
From the sign next to it: The "Ephesus" Artemis - Found at Hadrian's Vlila, in the so-called Greek Theatre and restored by Giovanni Volpato who sold the statue to the Museums in 1781. The sculpture reproduces the iconography of Artemis worshipped in the famous sanctuary at Ephesus, Asia Minor, in her incarnation as "Lady of the Animals", protector of fertility and abundance. The work is original in its combination of Greek and Oriental elements, with the close rows of overlapping breasts, interpreted by some to be bulls' testicles. There were numerous Roman copies made of this cultic statue, probably created during the second half of the 4th century BC.
The hall of tapestries!
It might appear to be a boring tapestry with old white guys and maybe a couple of pretty young girls, but check out that gynosphynx at the lower right! Yay catgrrl!
Here, that's Jesus, I assume from the halo, but I don't recall a cat and a dog figuring into his story. Or it could be some other scene entirely.
Here, we have the hall of ancient maps!
I snapped some random pictures of maps as vantage permitted.
Oh hey, lions! According to the sign next to it, this is "Justice, Faith (Religion), Charity" - ornamental cover of the throne of (Pope) Clement VII.
We got past those halls and into some rooms preliminary to the Sistine Chapel.
Good grief, this is a LOT of art.
Wow... That is a *super*-intricate floor tile design.
The sign reads, at least the first part: The /Room of the Segnatura/ contains Raphael's most famous works, that represent his debut in the Vatican and mark the beginning of the High Renaissance. The frescoes symbolize a summary of the knowledge of his time. The room takes its name from the highest court of the Holy See, the /Segnatura Gratae et lustitiae/, where the Pope used to officiate assemblies during the mid 16th century. Originally Pope Julius (1503-1513) used the room as his private studio and library: the iconographic scheme of the frescoes, painted between 1508 and 1511, reflects this use. The chiaroscuro works on the lower part were completely remade by Perin del Vaga, a scholar of Raphael, during the papacy of Paul III (1534-1549).
The ceiling is divided in four parts dedicated to different branches of knowledge, represented by allegorical female figures: the Poetry ..., the Philosophy, the Justice, and the Theology.
The aforementioned ceiling.
Welcome to the Sistine Chapel! You can see that famous painting of Adam and God at the center.
We spent quite a bit of time here. Dracosphynx tells me about, and I extract from Wikipedia later, the story that (quote) The Pope's Master of Ceremonies Biagio da Cesena said "it was most disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully, and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather for the public baths and taverns,"[27] In response Michelangelo worked da Cesena's semblance into the scene as Minos, judge of the underworld. It is said that when he complained to the Pope, the pontiff responded that his jurisdiction did not extend to hell, so the portrait would have to remain. (unquote)
A door on the way out of the Sistine Chapel.
We passed through what seemed like a hall filled with precious (in terms of 'precious metals') devotional objects; these as an example.
Note the leopard in the lower right corner of the ... book cover?
I believe this was a model of the Vatican.
Sphynxes! The wing shapes remind me of the Ark of the Covenant from the movie.
Yeah, I have to admit I have no idea who this lion-headed guy is. Sorry!
Here we are on our way out of the Vatican! The staircase starts off quite shallowly, then ramps into a serious downward turn that would leave people in wheelchairs quite discomfitted.
Back to the hotel! With no French-trained chef-made applesauce to hand, Dracosphynx gives me his apple, left over from the snack bag, with instructions to take and chew up a bite of apple, then add the sleeping pill to it and gulp it down as an improvised applesauce.
...
It works. But doesn't taste as good as the Le Ponant's applesauce. I miss their food. -_-
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Date: 2017-07-24 10:19 am (UTC)Then leads dry up. Alas.
...as an aside, "I have narrowed this down to either Apollo or Aphrodite but I can't tell which one" sounds like the beginning of a very large series of mistakes one does not want to make if one is an actual Greek mythological person...
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Date: 2017-07-26 12:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-29 05:46 am (UTC)Must say I'm jealous, you getting to go to the Vatican Museum. :D Those gold boxes like the cross, etc, are probably papal bits and bobs for ceremonies and stuff, and the big red box on the dogs is the sarcophagus of Constantina.
j
Isn't it funny how they preserved all that 'evil pagan' stuff? ;) ;) ;)
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Date: 2017-07-29 12:53 pm (UTC)The Vatican was interesting for sure! Just way too hot, even in the evening. I suppose those old buildings just weren't made for air conditioning.
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Date: 2017-07-29 03:07 pm (UTC)What I always wonder is how they would have dealt with the stink in the areas that had no sewers or around the open urine collection basins and the clothing manufacturers (where they used the urine as a bleach)! That had to have been HORRIBLE in the middle of summer!
That's one thing that's never mentioned in time travel stories! XD
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Date: 2017-07-29 03:32 pm (UTC)I've seen a few historical fiction and time travel fiction that comment on the stink, but can't remember the names off the top of my head. But yeah, perfume was probably big in those days for a reason. :)